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A major issue hindering Bitcoin is uncertainty about its future. The debate is over whether Bitcoin will be a successful long run innovation or fizzle out like so many prior innovations. It is possible to make a relatively accurate prediction about the future of Bitcoin by analyzing five factors successfully used by technology adoption experts for decades: relative advantage, compatibility with other innovations, experience through trialability, complexity and observability. These factors, derived from the classic work of innovation diffusion theorist Everett Rogers, when combined with features unique to Bitcoin, suggest that Bitcoin is here to stay.. Relative advantage Relative advantage in the field of innovation is defined as the improvements of a product as compared to its predecessors. Improvements include, but are not limited to, economic or social advantages measured in time, convenience, satisfaction or monetary benefits. Specific examples could be better service, consolidation of multiple functions into one tool, empowerment of users, improved interface, increased productivity, reduced user effort, saving money, saving space or storage and saving time. A major advantage Bitcoin has over other payment systems is that Bitcoin has a decentralized ledger. A decentralized ledger means that a single party is no longer in control of the records of previous transactions. …

‘Shady economics’ has become a buzzword associated to bitcoin” Newbies, read through a pile of content about covert actions people use bitcoin for: illegal trade and firearms and tax evasion. Presented in a such a way, bitcoin tends to be something highly suspicious for the most of the people, so they decide to stay away from it. The good news is bitcoin’s ‘criminal nature’ is a myth. In this article you will find five legitimate reasons why you should forget about shady economics and mason lizards from the illuminati government to show the great potential of bitcoin for personal use. Bitcoin Bona Fide Bitcoin is a digital currency based on the blockchain technology. It has no central management, doesn’t directly depend on any government regulation and uses advanced cryptography to provide trust between two or more anonymous users. ‘Coins’ are stored in the global blockchain network, instead of the traditional local depository of the bank. Transaction data is automatically divided by blocks and mixed with other global transactions, making it a die-hard for all kinds of faking or information scamming. Looks a bit scary, huh? Luckily, anonymity and participating in criminal activities are optional. In simple words, if you don’t …

Stellar is launching one of the first Blockchain applications which may hold the potential to affect a large number of people outside the digital currency space, through its global money transfernetwork aimed at some of the world’s largest remittance markets. It has been described by CTO Jed McCaleb as an open-source SWIFT-like network that allows connected organizations to transact with one another thus helping to reduce the friction that contributes to higher fees. The platform also connects diverse financial systems with one technical integration. He says to Cointelegraph: “Given the diverse nature of global financial services today, this interoperability can substantially lower global remittance costs by making transactions that cross national boundaries, currencies and financial institutions much more efficient. Transactions processed on the Stellar network take only 3-5 seconds to complete, and are extremely low-cost, regardless of the size of the payment amount, attributes that make the platform uniquely suitable for international remittances.” Cross-border payments Stellar has partnered four key institutions to enable low-cost global money transfers to India, the Philippines and Europe as well as cross-border M-PESA payments to and from Kenya, Ghana and Nigeria. These new partnerships are particularly meaningful to the company because it is one of …

It is no secret that the medical marijuana industry in the United States faces an uphill struggle, indeed our readers will remember that we covered the issue in detail recently and discussed how dependence on cash is putting both medical marijuana businesses as well as consumers at a great deal of risk. It is interesting to note that there have been developments in this field and there is now a payments solution at hand for regulated medical marijuana businesses as well as customers. CanPay has recently announced a solution for the legal marijuana industry that has become available to users as well as businesses in the states of Washington, Oregon and Colorado. If this solution does indeed get adopted en-masse, it promises to solve the industry’s cash-only problem. Why no banking love for marijuana The problem in the United States arises from the dichotomy in laws. While in many states the use of medical marijuana is now allowed, federal law still acts as a spanner in the wheel. The banking industry is thus wary of being on the wrong side of federal law and the industry is largely unorganized. Consumers who want to access medical marijuana in states where it …

Bitcoin and its revolutionary Blockchain technology have many advantages over the status quo. This ranges from better security, lower costs and superior inclusion. Another advantage is the speed of transactions, as the legacy banking system has been using the wire transfer method for generations. Now, results from a test run by a group of banking interests in Japan have revealed that Bitcoin’s Blockchain technology is more than ready to drag the current monetary transfer system into the 21st century. According to the Asian Nikkei Review, the unnamed “megabanks,” the Deloitte Tohmatsu accounting group and the Bitcoin exchange bitFlyer have been running Blockchain tests for a considerable part of 2016, with the final tests concluding in September. The goal was to see if Bitcoin’s Blockchain technology could hold up to the rigors and speed requirements of the current currency transfer systems. You could say that these tests were successful. “Blockchain’s low processing speed was seen as a major drawback of the technology,” said the Asian Nikkei Times. “But researchers were able to conduct 1,500 transactions per second using Blockchain, on par with the nearly 1,400 transactions the current interbank wire system is capable of handling at peak times.” The banks again were …

A new device is aiming to offer comprehensive security for bitcoins, reports Romain Dillet in a TechCrunch article. Called Case, the credit card-shaped product is aiming to prevent any further data breaches against bitcoin users. The device features a robust security apparatus employing a fingerprint sensor, a small screen, and a GSM chip. In order to authenticate a transaction, the user presses the bitcoin button, scans a QR code using Case’s camera, and performs biometric authentication via the fingerprint sensor. Each device comes with its own unique built-in key, and Case keeps a corresponding, encrypted key in its online database. There’s also a third key in an offline vault, which can be used to recover bitcoins in the event that a user loses their Case. While a recent MasterCard study indicated that consumer attitudes toward security in mPayments are apparently pretty lax, it seems a good bet that users of the bitcoin crypto-currency will be somewhat more concerned about safeguarding their stockpiles. Other organizations have dipped into biometrics to try to offer such security, as in the case of Robocoin’s bitcoin ATM, but no device has offered as comprehensive a solution as the one from Case. Case devices are slated …